Forum:2018-03-23 (Friday)
Discussion for comic for . Genius is an infinite capacity for making edits. ---- Kickstarter for New Edition of Girl Genius: The Works This Kickstarter has just started up. One of the stretch goals is supposed to be a assuming the project gets that far. : You know, the Foglios take pains to insist that GG isn't steampunk, and indeed you don't often see steam engines as a power source (not counting trains, for which coal-fired steam was a common feature well past the Victorian era), and yet here Agatha's death ray has two of them! ➤ : I must say, Phil's vest in the video is stunningly beautiful. Bkharvey (talk) 23:38, March 23, 2018 (UTC) Comment on Friday's Page The Sneaky Gate is open right now, and a B&W version of today's page can be seen through it, but given the policies of this wiki, all I will say right now is the plot thickens and I hope the page will get colored before the final version is posted. -- William Ansley (talk) 03:07, March 23, 2018 (UTC) : Alas, the page is still black and white, but with a promise of color soon. (Actually, I like seeing scans of Phil's original drawings before they are colored; I just don't like reading the complaints of the people who don't.) -- 04:09, March 23, 2018 (UTC) :: The page is in color now. It did happen very quickly. Good job, Kaja! -- William Ansley (talk) 20:46, March 23, 2018 (UTC) Now that the page is officially up: So Albia wants to keep Agatha (and, apparently, all of her companions) in England forever! I wonder how many volumes "forever" is? -- 04:09, March 23, 2018 (UTC) Not much of a surprise. It will be interesting to see what Albia's got the Circus doing on their "tour". And does Albia consider all of England to her garden, or just the actual green area under the dome... --Geoduck42 (talk) 04:13, March 23, 2018 (UTC) Looks like there may be one or more uses of RP&R in the future. --Ucalibur (talk) 05:47, March 23, 2018 (UTC) I thought there was something off about the queen. I'm curious to see how Trelawny Thorpe plays into all of this. She seemed like she may disapprove of the Queens actions when we saw her last. -CHIPSK8 (talk) 13:16, March 23, 2018 (UTC) I do think Wooster may and may actually act against his queen (UNTHINKABLE!) for the good of the Realm, in case Gil really does find a way to do what he threatened. --MadCat221 (talk) 14:42, March 23, 2018 (UTC) Aww, man, an occasion arrives to say "the plot thickens" and I'm on an airplane so William beats me! @Geoduck, I don't see why Albia would treat the Circus other than straightforwardly; their only importance to her is precisely to convince Agatha of her bona fides. But I had the same thought as you about the scope of "garden." (Back in my childhood I read a really creepy SF story in which the hero, a scientist, foils a dictator by inventing a potion that turns him and his generals into plants. The dictator, suspicious, makes the hero drink it first, but the latter considers becoming a plant himself a reasonable price to pay.) ➤ This makes me wonder about the other princesses. Do we know for sure that any of them are biological daughters of the Queen? I wonder if we've been misattributing the mysterious disappearances of girl sparks to the Other. For that matter, since presumably nobody else in England is 300 years old, I wouldn't be too surprised if it turns out that Albia herself sunk England. Maybe a side effect of becoming immortal? ➤ @MadCat, I'm sure Wooster will remember, and sure also that Gil and Tarvek will have roles to play in rescuing Agatha, but I'm not sure I'd back Gil head-to-head against Albia. My guess is that Agatha will undertake another glimpse into the infinite before we're done here. ➤ I don't know why I get hung up on these details, but in panel 1 she stands up off her throne, and in panel 3 she's human size but sitting on the throne! How and why? Bkharvey (talk) 15:41, March 23, 2018 (UTC) : Has anyone considered that the throne may be capable of changing size? -- SpareParts (talk) 01:47, March 24, 2018 (UTC) :: Clever idea, but in context what you're suggesting is that a giant-size Albia turned her already-giant-size throne into an ultra-giant-size throne. How does that make sense? Bkharvey (talk) 02:19, March 24, 2018 (UTC) : Personally, I'm starting to get a distinctly "coyote" vibe from Albia; influcence from Gunnerkrigg Court , perhaps? Or is it just me? Dmbreakey (talk) 15:56, March 23, 2018 (UTC) :: I don't really agree. I think Albia is acting like a very clever, spoiled child; with reason, since no one can stop her from doing and getting pretty much whatever she wants. Coyote is childish as well (whether the Gunnerkrigg Court version or the more general folklore version), so I think that they are similar in that, but one of Coyote's signature traits, to me anyway, is that he thinks he is much smarter than he is and outsmarts himself, as often as not. We haven't seen much evidence of this in Albia, at least not yet. -- William Ansley (talk) 20:46, March 23, 2018 (UTC) :: Coyote's intelligence varies wildly, unsurprisingly changing to fit the needs of the storyteller. He can range the gamut, from childish, not-as-smart-as-he-thinks, all the way to the penultimate master manipulator (a la the Seventh Doctor; well, the Doctor in general, really). Albia, so far, does seem to lean more to the latter end of the range, but she also strikes me as puckish. Hmm; maybe that is a better fit than Coyote, which might be a bit too specific here. I guess we'll see. Dmbreakey (talk) 21:16, March 23, 2018 (UTC) ::: I am far from an expert in this area, but I'd always thought that the whole point of Coyote as a character was to embody, overall if not in every story, a kind of wisdom not always visible/comprehensible to, or to the benefit of, humans. Or maybe that's just in the stories they gave us to read in school. Bkharvey (talk) 22:17, March 23, 2018 (UTC) :Re: the Circus. She calls them "amusingly clever". They are interesting enough, like Agatha, to keep in her garden. (Still, yes, it could turn out they are just visiting.) And with the size... "how?" We've seen how. And why? She needed to shrink down so she could snip at that bush. --Geoduck42 (talk) 16:21, March 23, 2018 (UTC) :: No, sorry, I didn't make myself clear: By "how" I meant "How, at human size, did she get back up onto the throne?" The only sequence of events that I can see working is that she stood up, immediately sat down again, and then shrank, which gets me back to "why." By the way, if the Foglios took writing classes, then the "weeds" in panel 6 should refer both to Gil-and-Tarvek and to the plant she's snipping -- but you don't prune weeds; you dig them out, root and all. Bkharvey (talk) 17:17, March 23, 2018 (UTC) ::: I'm not sure why you are quite so bothered by by how Albia got back up on the throne either. Who knows what happens in a comic between panels? Also, since she can make Agatha float, by whatever mechanism, presumably she can do the same thing to herself. Perhaps she floated back up to the seat. Albia is also mercurial in her moods and spontaneous in her movements. She seems to be dancing in panel 1, not merely getting up off the throne. So it doesn't surprise me that she would immediately sit back down.♦ ::: I think the double meaning of "weeds" referring to Tarvek-Gil and unwanted plants is definitely intended; I just think Phil gave up on the idea of trying to draw Albia pulling up a weed in a single panel and make it perfectly clear what she was doing. I do agree that the line would have been much more effective if he had managed to pull this off. -- William Ansley (talk) 20:46, March 23, 2018 (UTC) :: Ah, mechanics; well, the simplest answer is exactly as you say--she sits on the corner while giant-sized, then shrinks down. As for the why? I suspect it's to give us (the readers) a hint that this is a character that can do pretty much anything she wants, at a whim, and is prone to acting somewhat on impulse, albeit with a calculating bent. Hence my comparison to Coyote, a classic trickster in North American mythology. Although I suspect Albia has more in common with Coyote's more malevolent traits... --Dmbreakey (talk) 19:19, March 23, 2018 (UTC) :Something I've been thinking about, and this could definitely throw a much darker tone onto Albia. If we're assuming the missing girls have been incorporated into Albia's "garden", is it possible that they've been commandeered to become part of Albia's mind? A neural net, boosting Albia's mental capacity? If so, that might explain her somewhat random traits... different personalities exerting different levels of influence at different times. Just a thought. --Dmbreakey (talk) 19:26, March 23, 2018 (UTC) :: If by "missing girls" you mean the lack of female Sparks in Europa, it's been very strongly implied that they were taken by the Geisters and fed into the Summoning Engine. Albia seems to be a bit more selective. As for her relationship with her "Princesses", who knows at this point.. --Geoduck42 (talk) 20:25, March 23, 2018 (UTC) :: Ah, neural nets. Something about which I'm somewhat closer to an expert than about Coyote. Neurons don't have personalities, or even intelligence. The emergence of personality and intelligence from bunches of neurons is a not-as-yet-understood miracle. Even as metaphor, the reduction of a Spark to anything remotely comparable to a neuron would be a terrible waste. Presumably we are imagining that Albia wants to encompass Agatha with all her strengths intact, but devoted to Albia's will -- Albia is to ordinary Sparks as Sparks are to minions. Bkharvey (talk) 22:17, March 23, 2018 (UTC) P.S. Is Agatha cooking a turkey in that Works card?? Bkharvey (talk) 15:45, March 23, 2018 (UTC) : Yes? For a certain definition of "cooking" anyway... the flash cooker, for those without the patience to wait 30 seconds for the microwave! Dmbreakey (talk) 15:50, March 23, 2018 (UTC) :: Actually, now that you've encouraged me to think about mechanism (I didn't get past the turkey itself to notice the death-ray-looking thing above it!), that may well be a microwave; if it's just sending heat or static electricity or something, it would just char the outside and leave the inside raw -- you know, like a correctly cooked marshmallow. ☺ The only reason our microwaves need boxes around them is those pesky safety regulations that don't seem to be a feature of the GG world, right? Bkharvey (talk) 17:17, March 23, 2018 (UTC) Something just occurred to me after reading the infamous page with the Minionization/Threatening of Wooster by Gil again after I linked it: We got a foreshadowing hint of the submerged state of Albia there. "...Melt what is left of your miserable island to slag". --MadCat221 (talk) 16:52, March 23, 2018 (UTC) :There is a wallpaper of Agatha mounted on a rearing steam horse with the map of Europa in the background. This has a copyright of 2011. Cafe Press used to carry Girl Genius items - tee shirts, mugs, buttons. They also had the map of Europa seen in the background of the wallpaper, which I purchased. Copyright 2003. Most of southern England is under water. Londinum is "Glass City" on the map. Ireland is The Irelands, just a series of small islands. Most interesting (but probably just a joke) is a tiny island off to the northwest of the Irelands marked as The Island of Gold.It is surrounded by three signs - "No Monsters Here" "Perfectly safe" "No Monsters!" You can see it on the wallpaper, upper left hand corner. --Fred1740 (talk) 17:28, March 25, 2018 (UTC) :: The map is evidently still for sale on Cafe Press: https://www.cafepress.com/girlgenius.1438424237 --Geoduck42 (talk) 21:29, March 25, 2018 (UTC) :::There used to be a link to the Girl Genius products on Cafe Press on the comic website. I wrote my response before checking Cafe Press. When I did, I didn't see the map. Thanks for pointing it out. The map was the first hint of underwater Londoinum. It also has the crater of Oslo, which may or may not have been caused by Othar Trygvassen, the only survivor of Oslo. My wife was among the first subscribers to Girl Genius, We received the first six print issues before the slow pace of plot and erratic delivery caused her to drop it. Those issues contain drawings of fanciful submarines that I had wondered about at the time. --Fred1740 (talk) 01:02, March 26, 2018 (UTC) I am very glad to finally have a clear view of the front of Albia's "peeping into the infinite" outfit. I have been puzzled by panel 8 on ever since the page came out, trying to figure out if that bronzish strip in the front of the lower part of the dress, below the low-slung decoration in the front of the "belt" was part of the dress or not. -- William Ansley (talk) 20:46, March 23, 2018 (UTC) : I guess we each have our own small details to obsess over. :-) I just assumed that thing was a chastity belt! Whereas her willingness to look small by sitting on the corner of the huge throne... Well, as I say, to each his own sticking point. Bkharvey (talk) 21:57, March 23, 2018 (UTC) :: Yes, exactly! And I dare say that the details each of us choose to obsess over may appear to be odd or even a bit foolish to others. (Please don't take offense. I consider myself to be odd and more than a little foolish. I certainly am not claiming that anyone else is, only that they might conceivably appear so to me, just as I might to others.) I, for example, cannot imagine why Albia would choose to wear a chastity belt, nor do I think the item in question looks anything like one. To me, it seems as if it would be easy to remove and bears a much stronger resemblance to the bottom half of Leia's metal bikini or Agatha's outfit Just imagine Albia's outfit in panel 1 minus the light-green, gauzy fabric. I readily admit I'm no expert on such things, however. -- William Ansley (talk) 02:35, March 24, 2018 (UTC) ::: Oh. Well, all I really meant was "uncomfortable-looking metal undergarment," not that it was actually locked. Sorry... Bkharvey (talk) 03:16, March 24, 2018 (UTC) :::: Please, there is no need at all for an apology! It seems we were in rather close agreement on the nature of Albia's "belt", just at odds over terminology. -- William Ansley (talk) 03:31, March 24, 2018 (UTC) I thought Wednesday that "we do have an empire to run" sounded off, and sure enough, today we learn that she is continuing to concern herself with Agatha, rather than with running the Empire. And speaking of running the Empire, I thought Wed. that Stonegrease was meant to remind us of Boris, because of the extra arm, but in fact I'm now betting on the so-far-unnamed Maynard G. Krebs-looking guy as the actual runner of the Empire (not least because his neck thingy isn't the Union Jack). Bkharvey (talk) 23:38, March 23, 2018 (UTC) : As far as appearance alone goes, Stonegrease immediately put me in mind of a Oz illustration. Not any particular one, just the general style. -- William Ansley (talk) 02:35, March 24, 2018 (UTC) Now what does the background around Albia's head, in the inset at top-right, remind me of? At first I thought it looked like the time-traveling background (Bzzt, bzzzt), seen by Agatha very early on, and by Bang. But it isn't that. It's something else. Have we seen that somewhere else? Mvoorhis (talk) 00:29, March 24, 2018 (UTC) : Well, that depends. Can you see sixth-dimensional lattices? Bkharvey (talk) 14:26, March 24, 2018 (UTC) Oh, "We shall want something interesting to hook her attention." But she already has something: find the lantern! And given Mr. Undead-looking-guy's comment, that's at least part of what they want her for. So why distract her? Bkharvey (talk) 14:26, March 24, 2018 (UTC) : Agatha wants to take the Lantern back to Mechanicsburg. Albia wants something more that will encourage Agatha to happily stay put in the Garden. One obvious idea- fixing England's sinking problem. --Geoduck42 (talk) 23:39, March 24, 2018 (UTC) Answering my own question about growing and shrinking: Maybe I'm the last to figure this out and that's why y'all think my obsession over her size is strange, but if you look at the overall picture (I started to say "the big picture" but in this context that might be confusing!), what happens in this episode is that as soon as Agatha leaves the garden, Albia shrinks to normal size and stays that way. Because we first saw her as a giant, we (or at least I) assumed that was her normal size -- just as Agatha and Zeetha were meant to assume. But really she's a normal-size person who can take on giant size as a means of intimidation! As soon as it's just her own people watching, she happily returns to her normal size, which is the same as ours. What William describes as dancing, in the first panel, first struck me as a yawn-and-stretch, glad-that's-over pose, although admittedly I didn't notice her foot sticking up until I went back to see why it's instead a dance. And that also answers my point about why someone so vain would want to look small: She doesn't care how she looks to her courtiers, only to outsiders. Bkharvey (talk) 16:30, March 24, 2018 (UTC) P.S. ... and she burned Zeetha's hand on purpose, again for intimidation. Bkharvey (talk) 16:32, March 24, 2018 (UTC) P.P.S. So, funny you should bring up Oz, because I'm definitely starting to get a never-mind-the-man-behind-the-curtain feeling. Albia isn't all smoke and mirrors, but her own assessment of what she can and can't do is such that she feels a need to put on a show of omnipotence to conceal her limits. She isn't magic, just as Klaus told us. Her garden doesn't tend itself. (Although I bet minions do most of it.) Bkharvey (talk) 16:37, March 24, 2018 (UTC) P.P.P.S. The more I think about this, the more I think we need to re-read all the Albia pages from the perspective that she is an unreliable narrator. So, Albia says she could easily root around in Agatha's and Gil's heads but couldn't resist making improvements; I say she doesn't have a clue how to remove the implants and doesn't want Agatha to find that out. She says she could easily destroy the Empire's approaching ship but will refrain out of interest in the mystery passenger; I say she couldn't do it. (And let's not forget that this is a loose end!) The thing that most excited her interest is Agatha's timeskip; I say this means Agatha can do something she can't, although I confess I have no idea about the details. All we know for sure is that she's long-lived (we don't know for sure that she's immortal) and can grow and shrink. (Maybe levitating Agatha is just magnets.) She doesn't need to kidnap the Circus; she could teach Master Payne a thing or two about misdirection. We don't even know for sure that she's human(ish). Bkharvey (talk) 04:30, March 25, 2018 (UTC) : You may have something re: the rest of it, but regarding the airship. She probably isn't saying she'd personally point her finger at it and blow it up, but that she'd have sent her own airfleet against it. --Geoduck42 (talk) 09:43, March 25, 2018 (UTC) :: Oh, all right. But maybe she can't even grow and shrink, unless you think . :-) Bkharvey (talk) 00:31, March 26, 2018 (UTC)